Software applications designed to locate and display World Wide Web (“Web”) pages are in widespread use. Commonly referred to as Web browsers, two of the most popular of such applications are Internet Explorer from Microsoft Corporation and Netscape Navigator from Netscape Communications Corporation. These browsers are capable of displaying documents written in the common standard markup languages in use today.
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) remains a very common and popular authoring and presentation language for creating Web materials. The HTML standard, however, was originally based on the idea that an HTML document would remain static after being rendered in the browser. To allow for elements in an HTML page to be controllable after the page is rendered, Microsoft and Netscape browsers have incorporated support for the idea of DHTML (Dynamic HTML) into their browsers. DHTML is not actually a language, but is the combination and interaction of several Web-related standards, including HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), DOM (Document Object Model), and scripting.
Another development was the creation of the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) standard. XML is also not a language, but is a metalanguage or set of rules that allow the creation of other markup languages. XML allows developers to create markup languages that are more versatile and powerful than HTML. One of the standard XML languages that are now in common use is XHTML (extensible HTML). The XHTML language standard was developed by adapting the HTML standard to meet the requirements of XML. The DHTML standard also now accommodates XHTML. Specifications and descriptions for HTML, XML, XHTML and other Web-related open technology standards are available on the Web from the World Wide Web Consortium at http://www.w3c.org.
Many enterprises have recognized the commercial opportunities presented by the ability to create and edit documents in the browser and have undertaken to capitalize on it by developing products and services supported or enabled by software applications running in the browser. To facilitate and promote the development of browser-compatible software applications, browser vendors typically implement and make readily available an API (application program interface) of standard routines, protocols and tools for use by application developers.
One of the many applications that has emerged for this technology is Web-based document preparation allowing a user, using the user's browser, to design, edit and proof a customized WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) document, prepare an order for printing of the document, and transmit the document to a remote server for printing on an appropriate printing system. The term “document” as used herein refers to an electronic file intended for eventual printing by any known printing process on any printable medium, including, but not limited to, paper, cloth, glass, plastic, rubber, or wood.
For many types of products, Web-based design and editing offers the potential to substantially improve the speed and efficiency of the print job preparation process, which has traditionally involved either not having the opportunity to review the actual appearance of the printed product in advance or the time consuming steps of designing the layout, creating the proofs, reviewing and correcting the proofs, incorporating corrections or modifications, re-reviewing the proofs, purchase order completion, and eventually transmission to the printing facility.
One prior art system for performing browser-based document creation and editing is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,247,011 entitled “Computerized Prepress Authoring for Document Creation”. U.S. Pat. No. 6,247,011 discloses a system wherein an HTML document editing tool is downloaded to the user browser. User information is entered in a document preparation template and is displayed to the user on the user's display monitor. The HTML version of the document is uploaded to the server where it is converted to an image representing the appearance of the final printed document. The image is then downloaded back to the user's system. In the U.S. Pat. No. 6,247,011 system, the HTML version is for general layout and design of the document. The converted image version of the document, which would typically not be identical to the HTML version, is the version used for user review and approval.
Another system for browser-based document creation is described in co-pending and commonly owned application Ser. No. 09/557,571 entitled “Managing Print Jobs”, which is hereby incorporated by reference. Application Ser. No. 09/557,571 discloses a document preparation system comprising a downloadable editing application that allows a user to design and proof WYSIWYG documents in XHTML in the user's browser and server-side applications that convert the XHTML version of the document received from the browser to a prepress version in preparation for printing on a high-resolution printing device. This application does not expressly discuss the problems related to generating a WYSIWYG prepress version of a markup language document containing one or more multi-line text areas.
WYSIWYG functionality is highly important to many document developers and has for some time been available to computer users in modern word processing, desktop publishing and other applications. The successful application of browser-based XHTML document editing to the preparation of WYSIWYG materials containing multi-line text fields, however, has proved to be difficult. This has made browser-based editing tools generally unsuitable for the WYSIWYG creation of printed products having text lines longer than a few words.
A primary reason for this difficulty with longer text strings is that the XHTML standard does not require, and the browser does not implement, any tag or other indicia showing when or where a string of characters has reached the end of a line and been wrapped by the browser to the next line. The text wrapping decision and control resides in the browser, which dynamically breaks a lengthy string of text according to the width of the text area made available to the browser. If the precise location of all line breaks in the document as it was viewed and approved by the user are not known, a WYSWIG result cannot be guaranteed when the XHTML document is converted into a prepress format.
Therefore, in the prior art, the typical approaches taken in connection with proofing documents created in the browser were to either upload the document to a server for conversion to a bitmap image which was then downloaded back to the user for review or to simply notify the user that the final printed version might differ from the version viewed on the user's screen. The former approach can generate repetitive network traffic to and from the user's computer and server conversion activity while the document is being prepared. The latter is unsatisfactory to the user because the user cannot verify the appearance of the finished product. Both approaches can lead to user frustration and dissatisfaction.